On the Application of Mother Tongue in English Class母语在英语教学中的作用1.doc

母语在英语教学中的作用On the Application of Mother Tongue in English Class摘 要改革开放以来，我国的英语教育有了长足的发展，学生的英语水平也有了明显提高。同时，社会对大学毕业生的英语能力也有了更高的要求。这些要求迫使英语教学随之改革。其中，在英语教学中该不该运用母语成为了教师与学习者共同关注的重要问题。很多学校开始实行全英语教学，避免使用母语。这一方法在一定程度上提高了学生对英语的应用能力，被许多英语教师和学习者认可并采用。但其同时对学生英语水平的提高也起着负面的影响，不利于教师与学生之间的交流。在英语教学中，对某些词汇或概念的教学，采用英语讲解时学生不能够充分地理解，在这种情况下，如果能利用母语进行解释，那么学生就能对所学的知识更好的理解与接受。当然，在英语教学中母语的使用应该适可而止，不能滥用。因为英语教学的目的是培养学生应用外语的能力，如果在英语教学中过分的使用母语，学生在有限的课时内接触英语的机会就相应的减少了，这样就会不利于达到英语教学的目的。因此，如何恰当地在英语课堂利用母语汉语就成为值得探讨的话题。这里，本文以母语正迁移的理论作为理论依据,研究了母语在英语课堂中运用的现状，分析了母语在在英语课堂中的必要性和具体要求，并归纳出一系列可行的教学策略，充分发挥母语的正迁移作用，同时克服母语对于英语学习产生的负面影响，从而提高英语课堂的教学质量和效果。关键词： 英语教学；母语；语言迁移；教学策略 Abstract With the rapid development of the English education since the reform and open, the learners English level has obviously improved. At the same time, the society also increased the requirement to the English ability of the University graduates. Therefore, English teaching methods have to be faced with reform because of the high requirement. Among the controversial teaching methods, whether to use mother tongue in the class become to an important question to both of the teachers and the learners. A lot of schools begin to carry out “English Immersion Approach” which abandons mother tongue completely in the class. Though this teaching method helps to improve the learners English ability and has been adopted and accepted by many teachers and learners, it also has the negative effects that against the communication between teachers and students. During English teaching, there may be some vocabulary or concepts that can not be fully understood when explained in English only. In this case, the use of mother tongue can help the students understand and accept the knowledge better. However, enough is enough, excessive use of mother tongue is not reasonable, for the goal of English teaching is to cultivate students' English ability, but excessive use of mother tongue will decrease the students chance to get touch with English and make against achieve the goal of English teaching. Therefore, how to use mother tongue well/properly becomes to a problem that worthy of discussion. Based on the theory of positive transfer of language, this paper studies in current situation of mother tongue using in English Class, and analyses the reasons and the specific requirements of using mother tongue in English Class. In addition, this paper also concludes a series of practical teaching strategy to make good use of the positive transfer of mother tongue, and overcome the negative transfer to the English learning at the same time, so that to improve the quality and the result of English class.Key words: English teaching; mother tongue；Language Transfer；teaching strategyContentsAbstract (Chinese) .iAbstract (English).iiI. Introduction.1II. Literature Review.32.1 Related Studies on Mother Tongue Usage in English Class.32.2 Theoretical Background. 42.3 Situation of Mother Tongue Usage in English Class.5III.Application of Mother Tongue in English Class.73.1 Reasons for Using Mother Tongue in English Class.7 3.1.1 Providing A Quick and Accurate Translation for the Learners.7 3.1.2 Helping the Teachers to Check the Teaching Concepts and Establish the General Rules for the Class. .7 3.1.3 The Security of Learning Vocabulary.83.2 Requirements for Well/Properly Using Mother Tongue.8 3.2.1 Using More Flexible Methods to Help the Students Say More.8 3.2.2 Providing the Students with Comprehensible Input and More Chancesto Communicate with Each Other.8 3.2.3 Providing More Language Materials to Enrich the Students Knowledge.93.3 Ways for Application of Mother Tongue in English Class 10 3.3.1 Using Mother Tongue to Facilitate Teacher-student Communication.10 3.3.2 Using Mother Tongue to Facilitate Teacher-student Rapport11 3.3.3 Using Mother Tongue to Facilitate Learning of the Target Language.12IV. Strategies in Mother Tongue Using in English Class.144.1 The Creation of Mother Tongue Teaching Environment .144.1.1 The Creation of Campus Environment.144.1.2 Some Defects of the Interaction Theory144.2 Innovate Traditional English Classroom Teaching.164.2.1 The Filtration and Combination of Teaching Contents.164.2.2 The Changes of Traditional Teaching Organization.174.2.3 The Usage of the New Teaching Methods.18V. Conclusion.20Bibliography.22Acknowledgements24I. Introduction With the rapid development of the global economy in recent years, more and more fields of a country such as, economy, education and politics have been in contact with other countries. As a result, English has been the most frequently used language in the word because of the procession of the history and it has been the international language in the world. English teaching has a long history of more than 100 years in China. After the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, especially since the practice of the policy of reformation and opening, many western schools of teaching methodology have been introduced to China together with the introduction of advanced western science and technology. Among the English teaching methods, whether to use the mother tongue in the class become to a controversial issue to both of the teachers and the learners. However, the mother tongue influences can be easily traced in all aspects of second language learners' inter-language. Foreign language teaching proceeds when the learner already masters his mother tongue. Therefore, both in the foreign language teaching theory and in the foreign language teaching practice, the influence of the learner's mother tongue is an unavoidable factor. A lot of schools begin to carry out “English Immersion Approach” which abandons mother tongue completely in the class. Though this teaching method helps to improve the learners English ability and has been adopted and accepted by many teachers and learners, it also has the negative effects that against the communication between teachers and students. During English teaching, there may be some vocabulary or concepts that can not be fully understood when explained in English only. In this case, the use of mother tongue can help the students understand and accept the knowledge better. However, enough is enough, excessive use of mother tongue is not reasonable, for the goal of English teaching is to cultivate students' English ability, but excessive use of mother tongue will decrease the students chance to get touch with English and make against achieve the goal of English teaching. As a result, to use mother tongue well/properly, the study of the application of mother tongue in English Class is necessary.So that the aims of this paper is to study the relationship between mother tongue and second language acquisition and find some way to improve the quality and the result of English class. Based on the theory of positive transfer of language, the study and analysis in this paper show that mother tongue plays a positive role in second language acquisition and is an important factor to promote second language acquisition. At the same tome, this paper also studies in current situation of mother tongue using in English Class, and analyses the reasons and the specific requirements of using mother tongue in English Class also concludes a series of practical teaching strategy to make good use of the positive transfer of mother tongue. For example, to create a mother tongue teaching environment, include the creation of campus environment and the infiltration of the English activities after class to encourage the students continuously to spur them speak English without fear and Speak more; or to innovate the traditional English classroom teaching methods to increase learners interest and efficiency in English Class. For this reason, the quality and the result of English class can be obviously improved. .Literature Review 2.1 Related Studies on Mother Tongue Using in English ClassThe role mother tongue plays in the second language acquisition has been a disputative field in academic circles and it has become a branch of second language acquisition. There has been considerable progress in the study of transfer during the last hundred or so years, especially during the years since World War .Within the last few years, however, the importance of language transfer has been ebbed and flowed. In the 1950s,it was seen very important in SLA(Second Language Acquisition)when Lado's Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis dominated the field(Yu Liming,45).With the popularity of Chomskyan Universal Grammar which denied the existence of transfer phenomena, the researcher's interest in language transfer has declined since the 1960s(Hou Xinchao,122.)However, the development of the Interlanguage Theory and flourishing of psycholinguistics has finally recognized the significance of the role of the first language in SLA (Diao Jitian, 34). In Teaching Monolingual Classes (93), Atkinson suggests 'a careful, limited use of L1' to help students get the maximum benefit from activities which in other respects will be carried out in the target language. The mother tongue may be useful in the procedural stages of a class.Beyond these basically managerial functions of L1, Atkinson also suggests using the L1 for translation as a teaching technique. From my research with teachers, the overall rationale for this procedural use of L1 is that it is necessary to keep the lesson from slowing down or because things just can't be done any other way. Auerbach(19) also presents evidence from both research and practice perspectives supporting use of mother tongue in English Class for students at and beyond the beginning levels as well. She states that mother tongue in English Class benefits the learners in more than one way. Atkinson (87) enumerates advantages of mother tongue use in terms of learner preference, humanistic consideration and time efficiency. Cook (20) suggests mother tongue can be used when explaining grammar, organizing tasks, disciplining students and implementing tests. Butzkamm(23) is one of those who strongly oppose the exclusion of mother tongue in the foreign language class. He argues that mother tongue, as a cognitive and pedagogical resource, is the greatest asset people bring to the task of foreign language learning.Language use in the foreign language class has also drawn Chinese researchers attention. Some of them focused on theoretical justification of the positive role of mother tongue (e.g. Sun Yao 45; Tang 43; Zhou Mao 126); while others conducted empirical studies producing qualitative results. He （21）observed 35 teachers from ten institution examining the practice opportunities in foreign language classes. He reported that only ten percent of the teachers use almost exclusively English throughout the lessons. Bo (67) explored code-switching in English Classes and found that English-Chinese switching was prevalent. Similarly, as the theoretical studies advocate, most of the empirical studies reported mother tongue use in ministering the class, grammar and words instruction, and several other contexts.2.2 Theoretical BackgroundThe definition of "language transfer" occurred first in Lado's Linguistics Across Culturein 1957.Lado thought that in the environment of the second language acquisition，learners depend on their mother tongue and transfer the language form，meaning and the culture related with their mother tongue to the second language acquisition. There are two forms in language transfer：negative transfer and positive transfer. When there is difference between mother tongue and the target language，the negative transfer occurs. The negative transfer is mainly negative and will lead the language errors and the occurrence of difficulties in language acquisition. It will prevent learners from acquiring new knowledge. Ellis pointed out that in the first step of the second language acquisition，learners often depend on their mother tongue because of their lack of enough knowledge of the target language. In this step，there may be more negative transfer of mother tongue. When the rules of mother tongue and the target language are the same，the positive transfer may happen，and promote the study of new knowledge. This paper analyzes the relationship between mother tongue and second language acquisition and emphasizes on the positive transfer and its role in second language acquisition. The study and analysis in this paper show that mother tongue plays a positive role in second language acquisition and is an important factor to promote second language acquisition.2.3 Situation of Mother Tongue Usage in English ClassAlthough there is fierce dispute of using mother tongue in English Class, Mother tongue is still popular in English Class and follows are some situations that mother tongue is used:(1) Eliciting languageHow do you say X in English?, for example, can often be less time-consuming and can involve less potential ambiguity than other methods of eliciting such as visuals, mime, creating a need, etc.(2) Checking comprehensionMother tongue can be used to check comprehension of concept behind a structure, e.g. How do you say “Ive been waiting for ten minutes” in Chinese? This technique encourages students to develop the ability to distinguish between structural, semantic and pragmatic equivalence. Mother tongue can also be used to check comprehension of a listening of reading text. For example, a comprehension task which does involve production, but presented in the students mother tongue, can sometimes probe comprehension more effectively than many types of non-linguistic tasks designed to avoid the problem of recoding in the target language.(3) Co-operation among learnersStudents, in pairs or groups, compare their answers to grammatical exercises, comprehension tasks etc. in their own language. This activity does not involve the added burden, over and above understanding the structure, of following the met language used to explain it. Furthermore, in case the most lucid explanation or the clearest inductive presentation by the teacher fails for some students, a mother tongue explanation by a peer who has unders